Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choice Awards

Oct 15, 2002  By Rebecca Cassity
 in
This year's results are in; some are not much different from last year, and some are more surprising.

Linux Journal has announced the winners of the 2002 Readers' Choice Awards. Almost 6,000 Linux Journal readers visited the Linux Journal web site and voted on their top choices in 25 categories. For more information on the winners, please see the feature article in the November issue of Linux Journal (#103), now on newsstands.

Favorite Distribution

Mandrake Linux

Favorite Graphics Program

The GIMP

Favorite Word Processor

OpenOffice

Favorite Text Editor

Vim

Favorite Desktop Environment

KDE

Favorite Office Suite

OpenOffice

Favorite Programming Language

C

Favorite Development Tool

GCC

Favorite Shell

bash

Favorite Linux Journal Column

Cooking with Linux

Favorite Processor Architecture

AMD Athlon

Favorite Communication Board

Cyclades

Favorite Database

MySQL

Favorite Backup Utility

tar

Favorite Programming Beverage

Coffee

Favorite Linux Game

Quake III

Favorite Web Browser

Mozilla

Favorite Linux Web Site

Slashdot

Favorite E-mail Client

KMail

Favorite Instant-Messaging Client

gaim

Favorite Distributed File Sharing System

Gnutella

Most Indispensable Linux Book

Linux in a Nutshell, by Ellen Siever

Favorite Ad Filtering Tool

Junkbuster

Favorite Embedded Distribution

MontaVista Linux

Favorite Audio Tool

xmms

Linux Journal's annual Readers' Choice Awards allow members of the Linux community to pick their favorites from a variety of options in a number of categories. Write-in votes also are accepted in every category. Voting in the 2002 Readers' Choice Awards took place between July 15 and August 12, 2002, and was open to everyone.

email: rebecca@ssc.com

______________________

Rebecca Cassity is the Director of Sales for Linux Journal

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Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 10/21/2002 - 02:00.

Why I don't find the category "Media Player"?!

I suggest MPlayer

http://mplayer.hu

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 10/21/2002 - 02:00.

I just don't know why MPlayer isn't here. MPlayer is the most versatile program of the GNU/Linux world! Plays almost every video format, has support to most of the codecs of the market. Actually, MPlayer doesn't even have another program to compare, be it in the free or the closed market!

MPlayer r0x!!!

Bernardo Silveira

bernardojts@ig.com.br

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 10/21/2002 - 02:00.

Favorite Word Processor OpenOffice

Methought that writer was a wordprocessor and OpenOffice was a Suite consisting of a Word processor,a spreadsheet, a presentation creator, etc.

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 10/21/2002 - 02:00.

Hey! You forgot one: favourite distributed filesystem: AFS

(NB there is a subtle difference between gnutella-type filesharing and

distributed filesystem)

AFS

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 10/30/2002 - 03:00.

Do you mean AFS over intranet (private nets) or internet

(insecure net)?

Did you considered SFS?

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 10/18/2002 - 02:00.

Best Text Editor: Vi

Because you have not used Emacs!

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 10/19/2002 - 02:00.

Not Vi, but Vim. Not the same. And I tried Emacs, but ran back to the good Vim! Vim forever!

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 10/23/2002 - 02:00.

Emacs is a decent OS, but it lacks a good text editor.

Vim, on the other hand, is a good text editor.

_lean_and_mean

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 01/02/2003 - 03:00.

Great! I am considering using it as my signature ;-)

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 11/13/2002 - 03:00.

That's just awesome. I'm still laughing.

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 10/18/2002 - 02:00.

U are so right

VI IS GAY

and what is with KDE and KMAIL, they are horrible!!!!!! blackbox and pine for me

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 10/18/2002 - 02:00.

vi rules, and ICEWM is betther than blackbox

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 10/18/2002 - 02:00.

Better:

Beacause you are afraid of Emacs >-]

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 10/17/2002 - 02:00.

Wow! I couldn't have written a worse line up. Mandrake? Slashdot? Kmail? Sheesh. Probably explains why I don't read linux journal. Couldn't agree less.

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 10/17/2002 - 02:00.

nah... the only problem is that mandrake is #1. gentoo should be #1 and mandrake should be #2. other than that, this line up would make a most excellent system :)

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

nDiScReEt's picture
Submitted by nDiScReEt (not verified) on Fri, 10/18/2002 - 02:00.

Depends on if you compute in ease of use. Show me a newbie that can follow the directions from beginning to end and I will consider your argument valid. A system with the ability to totally optimize every program is without question, a great asset to any distribution, but without ease of use from installation to playing with the various applications subtracts from it's overall value. I too love gentoo but I don't think many newbies can successfully install gentoo their first time. I can't get any of the ones I know to even look at it they were so "frightened" by the console and terminal interface. Poor M$ user drones.

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 10/23/2002 - 02:00.

I reeeeally want the features Gentoo has, but I'm simply put off by even looking at the installation-guide. But it looks like it's really rockin' !

If only the Gentoo people could create some kind of image that had a friendly GUI installer, so us Linux-newbies could try it out too, without all the hassle.

It IS possible to have a technologically advanced and still user-friendly distro :)

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 10/17/2002 - 02:00.

nah vim instead of emacs outrageous!

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 10/19/2002 - 02:00.

GNU Emacs is clearly the product of a deranged mind, designed primarily to induce RSI in those unfortunate enough to fall into its trap. It is also a massively bloated monstrosity that is the antithesis of the UNIX philosophy.

In contrast to Emacs, vi is a simple and elegant editor that perfectly fits the UNIX philosophy of specific tools for particular tasks. It moreover can be used without contorting the hands into unnatural positions.

Vim is essentially a better (if larger) vi, which keeps with the spirit of the UNIX philosophy. It is easy to learn, but the power of its regular expressions is very deep, allowing virtually any text-editing task to be easily done.

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 10/17/2002 - 02:00.

Does this mean that we'll see Mandrake finally mentioned more often in Linux Journals, or is it going to be the usual RedHat and SuSe story in the future?

For example, I just LOVE this story:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6361

The article discusses two Linux distributions, Red Hat, the best known, and SuSE, the most technologically advanced.

Wonder how come so many people use Mandrake then? Must be because of all these nice words they found about it in Linux Journal *cough*...

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 10/23/2002 - 02:00.

s/Mandrake/Mandrake and KDE/

They are so pathetically biased you'd think RMS review each and every article...

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 10/17/2002 - 02:00.

I was taking it all very seriously until I read "Favorite Linux Web Site - Slashdot".

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 10/17/2002 - 02:00.

That shouldn't put you off. Even programmers need comedy once in a while :)

Why so short and dry ?

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 10/16/2002 - 02:00.

Dear Rebecca

Last year the results were announced with much more detail,

the winner, second and third in each category were mentioned,

and comments were made where appropriate. What happened

this year ?.

Cheers

:-)

Re: Why so short and dry ?

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 10/17/2002 - 02:00.

The full article with all the winners and reasons appears in the November 2002 issue.

Heather Mead

Senior Editor

Linux Journal

Re: Why so short and dry ?

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 10/28/2002 - 03:00.

SO, buy the mag to see the article? NOT!

Re: Why so short and dry ?

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 10/17/2002 - 02:00.

Dear Heather

Thanks a lot for the answer, looking forward for

the article !!!

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 10/16/2002 - 02:00.

Favorite Linux GameQuake III ... hmmmmmm

and frozen-bubble !!!

http://www.frozen-bubble.org

DaCorse.

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 11/06/2002 - 03:00.

Frozen-bubble & mandrake - vive the french way of linux!

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 10/18/2002 - 02:00.

no, it sucks!

it doesn't have a Network mode yet!

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 10/16/2002 - 02:00.

Favorite CD-Burn program? I nominate K3B....

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 10/22/2002 - 02:00.

Well, while I think it's a pretty piece of software, I think thed nominations should be desktop-independent.

I nominate xcdroast.

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 02/22/2003 - 03:00.

Eroast. You will be amazed. :)

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 10/17/2002 - 02:00.

YUp I do agree that K3B is really excellent

after trying almost all of them

k3b is really the easiest and the one I use now on a daily basis

I use to use xcdroast, then gcombust then kreatecd but moved to k3b ( Istill have kreatecd and cdbakeoven just in case)

C.

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 10/16/2002 - 02:00.

"Favorite Desktop Environment KDE

...

Favorite Programming Language C"

So KDE is programmed in C, right?

:))

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 10/17/2002 - 02:00.

I am laughing so hard I can barely type this! :)

Re: :))

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 12/06/2002 - 03:00.

glad to see you are happy :-p

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 10/16/2002 - 02:00.

Well, since KDE is built on the QT library, which is a C++ library, and KDE is programmed in C++, and C is a subset of C++, then I suppose that some of KDE is programmed in C. Why the question?

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 10/28/2002 - 03:00.

C has been around a lot longer than C++. C is not a subset of C++.

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 11/02/2002 - 03:00.

With functionality in mind, C is a subset of C++, because C++ lets you do anything C does, but not vice versa.

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/07/2002 - 03:00.

For those not familiar with the inner workings of compilers,

C is NOT a subset of C++.

Even worse, C++ is nothing more than a programmer friendly extension to C. Most people don't know this, but when you compile a C++ program, one of the compilation phases translates C++ into plain C, and then compiles the plain C into assembly code and then into executable code.

So, basically, C++ is more like a mere extension of C

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 11/08/2002 - 03:00.

Wrong. I'm not sure which compilers you are referring too, but MS Visual Studio, GCC, Borland, and Metrowerks compilers all compile directly.

Also, saying that C++ is just an extension to C is similar to very similar to saying that C is just "a programmer friendly extension' to assembler

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 07/14/2003 - 02:00.

He's actually kind of right. Uptill GCC 3.0 it was turned into a blob of C code. 3.0 Made got ride of the nasty hack which is why it broke some things and fixed alot of problems all at at once

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 03/23/2003 - 03:00.

Hahaha all languages are just programmer friendly ways of writing machine code ;o)

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 11/13/2002 - 03:00.

Ditto.

AND

If you've ever worked on/maintained a large project in C++, you thank Bjarne for the fact that it's object oriented (or object based or whatever), and not procedural C, instead of getting all snotty about which one was made first.

Didn't this start as a joke? Favourite language C. favourite environment NOT written in C: KDE.

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 10/17/2002 - 02:00.

Cough... ballot stuffing... cough.

The KDE project is famous for whipping up its zealots into frenzy of web voting (see dot.kde.org). I wouldn't trust these results any more than I'd trust, say, the Florida presidential election results.

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/07/2002 - 03:00.

This guy obviously works on the gnome project or is associated with it in some way. KDE is the way to go...

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Ludootje's picture
Submitted by Ludootje (not verified) on Tue, 11/05/2002 - 03:00.

That's the dumbest comment I ever read. KDE isn't 'famous for whipping up its zealots into frenzy of web voting'. Just because you prefer Gnome or whatever doesn't mean KDE asks its users to vote for it!

Ludootje

ludootje@linux.be

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 10/25/2002 - 02:00.

Man, what a troll. It was never in the topic of any KDE IRC channel, I didn't see it on kde-devel or kde-core-devel, and it wasn't on the Dot. Sigh.

Re: Linux Journal Announces Winners of 8th Annual Readers' Choic

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 10/17/2002 - 02:00.

It's more like, Cough ... Every commercial distro on the planet except Red Hat either defaults to KDE or some custom version of it.... Cough.

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